The Church and Science

 Why is teaching evolution at a Catholic school controversial? How different do you think science and the Church really are? Many Catholics believe that the topic of evolution should not be taught in Catholic schools because they contradict each other. However, is this really the case? Let's dive in a bit deeper.

Before we started this project, we had to discuss as a group, what we thought the Church's views on our topics were. Most groups believed that the Church was against ideas of evolution or the Big Bang theory, however, Pope Francis stated, "The evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve" (Welsh). The Church believes that God initiated the creation and continued work through evolution. Contrary to popular belief, science is said to bring us closer to God rather than further.

My group solely focused on CRISPR/gene editing and the Church's views. Our group believed that the Church would be against CRISPR because the Bible states everyone is "made through the "image and likeness" of God, so people should not genetically change who they are. The Pope has openly said treatments for genetic diseases are a good thing, however, is 100% against using CRISPR on embryos. Changing embryos is not only very controversial in the science world because editing embryos change that embryos germline forever, but is also controversial in the Church's views as well. Pope Francis believes that testing on embryos takes part in "throwaway culture", which he defines as human life no longer seen as a primary value to be respected or safeguarded.

Overall, I think my group did a pretty good job on our presentation. We managed our time wisely and discussed these topics without any biased opinions. I think one "glow" for our project was that we discussed certain aspects of gene editing rather than gene editing as a whole because the Church was against embryonic testing and not so much testing with genetic diseases. We had little writing on our slides and made our slides engaging for the class. One thing I could have done better is discussing more on the Pope's views on CRISPR because I couldn't really find any information that was new, most of the websites had pretty much the same (if not very similar) information.

I actually found this project very interesting. I believed that the Church was against evolution, the Big Bang Theory, or gene editing. To my surprise, the Church supports both evolution and the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory talks about the origin of the universe and NOT the creation, which the Church specifies as two different ideas. The Church also supports evolution because for evolution to occur, God would have needed to create creatures that would end up evolving.

Learning more about the Church and Science made me wonder why these ideas are not discussed more often. This project helped me gain insight into the Church's and Pope's actual views on scientific topics. Thank you, hope you learned a little something as I did!